PROJECT APOLLO: THE CONCLUSION

Major Issues in Apollo

Most of the issues over which NASA and the external science community
wrangled grew out of the necessity to define, virtually from scratch,
the scientific content of lunar exploration. One lunar scientist
pinpointed the difficulty in midprogram:

. . . Apollo 11 marked the beginning of a new
generation of lunar science... born in the hot arc of one of the
greatest technical achievements in the history of society. Full
recognition of, and attention to, the scientific aspects of the mission
w[ere] for some time lost in the management and excitement of the larger
enterprise both by NASA and an insufficiently involved and unprepared
scientific community [emphasis added].27

To appreciate why attention to the scientific potential of Apollo was
neglected for so long, it is necessary only to recall where the nation's
manned space flight program stood at the time President Kennedy issued
his challenge:

When lunar landing became the Apollo objective in May
1961, the United States had only 15 minutes of manned flight experience
in space and a tentative plan for a spacecraft that might be able to
circumnavigate the moon. No rocket launch vehicle was available for a
lunar voyage and no route (mode) agreed on for placing any kind of
spacecraft safely on the lunar surface and getting it back to earth. Nor
was there agreement within NASA itself on how it should be done.28

Given those circumstances, it is easy to understand the reaction of one
on whom much of the responsibility would fall.

Acutely aware that NASA's total manned space flight
experience was limited to one ballistic flight and that he was being
asked to commit men to a 14-day trip to the moon and back, [MSC
Director] Robert Gilruth said he was simply aghast.29

It can hardly be doubted that Gilruth's reaction was shared by his fine
engineers at the Manned Spacecraft Center - and by managers in the
Office of Manned Space Flight as well. The 8- or 9-year time limit given
them by Kennedy* would have daunted
even the most optimistic engineer who was familiar with the state of the
art in aerospace engineering and the complexities of a moon landing.
Charged with that responsibility, they had to put first things first,
and their single-minded concentration on essentials left science with a
low priority. No evidence has been found that Bob Gilruth and his
engineers actively opposed the incorporation of science into Apollo.
They knew that it would have been absurd to land men on the moon if they
did not at least leave their spacecraft to explore the surface - and, if
possible, collect samples and emplace scientific instruments.

Still, the feeling developed among some scientists that MSC was
obstructive toward science, and as much as anything else, the Houston
center's narrow focus on nonscientific aspects of the program was
responsible. Homer Newell, associate administrator for space science,
knew well that MSC could be difficult to deal with, but he could at
least perceive a reason for it:

[MSC's] need to be meticulously careful in the
development and operation of hardware for manned spaceflight, plus [the
center's] general disinterest in the objectives of space science as the
scientists saw them, led to extreme difficulties in working with the
scientific community.30

Not that other branches of NASA found the scientific community easy to
work with. In its early days the space agency skirmished more than once
with the National Academy of Sciences and its Space Science Board over
the question of who should decide the content of the space programs, The
executive director of the Space Science Board went so far as to urge
that NASA rely exclusively on the outside scientific community for its
science program, which would effectively have reduced NASA's role to
providing launch vehicles and operational support for science (besides,
of course, financing the experimenters). Newell later recalled that
gradually a working arrangement evolved putting NASA "in the
driver's seat, [with] the scientific community serving as navigator, so
to speak, ... with a mixture of tension and cooperation that is best
described as a love-hate relationship."31

Science would eventually become the navigator for lunar exploration as
well, but only after the primary objective had been attained. During the
early years the Manned Spacecraft Center at least made some significant
gestures toward eventual accommodation of science, establishing an
office to coordinate experiments, providing space in the lunar module to
carry scientific equipment,32 and
starting to train astronauts in the principles of field geology. It was
less concerned with developing a full program of lunar exploration. MSC,
in fact, could do little in that regard, because strategic planning for
lunar exploration was the responsibility of the Office of Space Sciences
and Applications (OSSA) at Headquarters.

For a considerable time following the establishment of Apollo, no
organized lunar and planetary science lobby existed. So in formulating a
program of lunar science, OSSA first sought statements of broad
objectives from ad hoc groups, such as the Sonett committee, which
established the basic criteria for science on the Apollo missions in
1962 and the training required for astronauts to execute the science
program [see Chapter 2]. Considered
and endorsed in principle at the 1962 Summer Study at the State
University of Iowa, these criteria were then used by discipline-oriented
planning teams to define specific scientific investigations. By mid-1964
these teams had listed the experiments expected to be the most
productive - some to be conducted on the moon, some to be done on
returned samples, and some to be carried out by instruments left on the
lunar surface [see Chapter 3].

In 1965, the Summer Study at Woods Hole, Massachusetts, sharpened the
focus by formulating 15 key questions about the moon that lunar science
studies should be designed to answer. Following the Woods Hole sessions,
a study group met at nearby Falmouth to make the first attempt to
explicitly define an evolutionary program of lunar science for the next
10 to 15 years [see Chapter 3][see Appendix 3]. The Falmouth report became the
basis for much of the planning that followed.33

Thus while the Manned Spacecraft Center was working toward its primary
aim of landing people on the moon, OSSA was preparing the ground for the
scientific work to be done when they got there. In 1966, after years of
encouragement from Headquarters, MSC established a Science and
Applications Directorate, which assumed much of the responsibility for
Apollo science and, more important to the science community, put a
research scientist into the management structure at MSC [see Chapter 6]. The new office had no
significant effect on Apollo plans immediately, but its influence was to
become stronger as the project went on.

One of the first actions taken by Wilmot N. Hess, MSC's first Director
of Science and Applications, was to convoke a summer study to translate
the plans devised at Falmouth into scientific requirements for Apollo
exploration: mission duration, lunar surface mobility, and scientific
use of the command module in lunar orbit. Participants did their job
well: in the preface to their report Homer Newel! noted that "the
plans are optimistic and exceed the capability of the agency to
execute."34 Even so, the most
important recommendations that came out of the 1967 study at Santa Cruz
[see Appendix 3] were carried out on the
Apollo missions as soon as the required engineering and operational
changes could be incorporated into the system.

Few questions were as important in the ultimate success of Apollo as
making certain that the external science community had a voice in the
planning of the missions. In the summer of 1967 Wilmot Hess created
three science teams that would operate throughout the duration of the
project: the Group for Lunar Exploration Planning (superseded in 1970 by
the Science Working Panel), the Lunar Sample Analysis Planning Team and
the Lunar Sample Preliminary Examination Team. The specific
responsibilities of these groups were probably not more significant than
their role in promoting cooperation between MSC and the science
community. Establishment of the two teams concerned with lunar samples
placed responsibility for sample distribution in the hands of
scientists; the Group for Lunar Exploration Planning was intended to
reassure scientists that their concerns were at least being considered
in developing plans for later missions.

Yet when the first lunar landing mission succeeded in bringing back
nearly 50 pounds (21 kilograms) of lunar samples for study, some
scientists once more went public with the complaints that NASA was
"not responsive to the needs of science" [see Chapter 10]. It is not easy to determine
exactly what was meant by this charge, expressed as it was in such
general terms. Nor is it easy to grant it much validity, considering
that NASA began, immediately after Apollo 11, to incorporate some of the
high- priority improvements in the Apollo system suggested by the Santa
Cruz conference - the lunar roving vehicle, the extended lunar module,
and modifications of mission plans to accommodate larger payloads - all
of which would improve the scientific return. Trajectory designers at
MSC set out to improve the landing accuracy of the second mission,
explicitly if not solely for the benefit of science. What more NASA
could have done for science in Apollo, short of turning the program over
to scientists, is difficult to imagine.

The complaining scientists overlooked or ignored the fact that manned
space flight officials could not be certain that the first
attempt at a lunar landing would succeed. (Michael Collins, command
module pilot on Apollo 11, confessed that on launch day he would not
have given better than even odds that the whole complex mission would be
carried out without a failure.35) That
being true, it was not prudent to begin modifying the spacecraft before
the first landing was accomplished.** If Neil Armstrong had been forced to abort
his landing, George Mueller, chief of manned space flight, was prepared
to send missions to the moon at the shortest intervals launch teams
could manage until someone landed on the moon and returned safely to
earth before the decade of the 1960s was out. As soon as that was done,
Mueller urged MSC Director Bob Gilruth to do his best to accommodate
science. Gilruth's response, following the first lunar science
conference in January 1970, was to bring his principal lieutenants and a
group of leading scientists to the table to work out their major
differences, with the result that scientists' input to the later
missions was effective and satisfying to the scientists [see Chapter 11].

Both were right and both were wrong. If lunar explorers had only a
little time on the moon, science would be best served if one of the crew
was a scientist of considerable experience who could make the most of
what little he could see and do. On the other hand, an emergency in a
lunar mission might leave no time for conscious thought. The ability to
take the proper action instinctively would be expected of an experienced
test pilot but might be difficult to instill into a person having little
experience of acting decisively in emergencies.

As long as spacecraft were regarded as experimental rather than
operational, Slayton's view - shared by Bob Gilruth - prevailed,
modified by the addition of some basic instruction in geology to the
astronaut training program. Eventually MSC yielded on the point of
accepting scientists for astronaut training, but did so with the
stipulation that they must also qualify as jet pilots, if necessary by
taking flying training before starting in the astronaut program.

Fortunately, an astronaut's ability to react appropriately in a
time-critical emergency was never really tested in Apollo.*** No lunar module pilot ever had to take
over from a disabled commander during a lunar landing or had to bring
back a lunar module from the moon alone. Whether a scientist, properly
trained, could have performed as well as a test pilot was never
determined. For what it is worth, Jack Schmitt was sure that he could
have done it, and his commander, Gene Cernan, was satisfied to have
Schmitt along.

On the other hand, 11 of the 12 men who walked the moon were pilots who
did have to play the role of scientist, at least to a limited degree, in
selecting lunar samples. As might be expected, their performance varied,
but at least publicly none of the scientists ever seriously faulted the
results. Jack Schmitt, who took an active interest in geology training
before he was assigned to Apollo 17, later rated the performance of the
crews as generally good:

We got excellent sampling, we got excellent
photography, . . . but until Apollo 17 we did not get very much good,
solid descriptive work, with one exception - that exception being Neil
Armstrong. . . . He was probably the best observer we sent to the moon,
in spite of very limited training; he just had a knack for it.38

The best-prepared crew, in terms of time spent in preparation for
exploration, was that of Apollo 15. Scott, Irwin, and Worden put in more
training sessions on lunar surface operations than any crew [see Appendix 7], and, with Jack Schmitt on their
backup crew, they had more tutoring than the others as well. Dave Scott
took a special interest in the lunar science,39 and it paid off; Apollo 15 was acclaimed at
the the as the most productive mission yet flown [see Chapter 13] and, except for Schmitt's
descriptive work on Apollo 17, was not surpassed by the last two
missions. The scientists' delight with the results of Apollo 15 may have
been influenced by the fact that it was the first of the extended
missions, with all the extra work that allowed, but that does not
detract from the performance of Scott and Irwin.

Whether all the missions would have benefited from the presence of a
geologist was not settled in Apollo. By the time Jack Schmitt flew on
Apollo 17 it had become clear that geological clues were not as obvious
on the lunar surface as they are on earth. Possibly an experienced field
geologist could have found more than the astronauts did. Still, the
conditions of working on the moon (i.e., limited time and the
restrictions on mobility and dexterity imposed by the space suit)
suggest that the advantage would not have been as great as some
believed. A longer program might have provided more time for that kind
of work, but by the time the missions began to fly, scientific emphasis
had shifted away from the field and into the laboratory.

Apollo experience provided no final answer to the question of the
relative capabilities of scientists and astronauts in space exploration.
Manned space flight programs later evolved to the point where
specialists of both kinds could go into space, so the debate has lost
some of the relevance it had before Apollo.

The most troublesome requirement imposed on the management of lunar
samples, however, was biological containment. From the construction of
the LRL to the conduct of mission operations, the requirement to prevent
contact between the earth's biosphere and the objects and persons who
had been to the moon made Apollo more costly and more complex.

The added cost and complexity were unavoidable after a conference
sponsored by the Space Science Board issued a formal statement in 1965
that the earth must be protected from back-contamination by any
organisms that might be brought back from the moon [see Chapter 4]. The cult of extraterrestrial
life, although lacking the smallest shred of positive scientific
evidence to support it, had many followers among scientists and the
public.40 NASA could not refute such a
warning, nor could it afford to ignore it. What if the believers were
right? Granted the infinitesimal probability that living organisms
existed on the moon, and the real question of whether they might survive
on earth and be dangerous, the consequences of releasing them on earth
were so potentially enormous that the chance could not be taken.

So, without enthusiasm but at considerable expense, MSC built the Lunar
Receiving Laboratory with provisions for two-way biological containment
(preventing biological contamination of the samples and the
escape of contaminants from the samples into the laboratory) and
modified recovery procedures to isolate spacecraft and astronauts from
the earth's biosphere. As the system was finally implemented, one
serious gap remained: the crew would leave the command module by opening
the hatch and clambering into the recovery raft. MSC refused to consider
hoisting the returned spacecraft aboard ship with the astronauts inside
or to add a biological filter to the post-landing ventilation system.
The Interagency Committee on Back Contamination objected, but MSC held
firm, on the grounds that crew safety would be imperiled. The committee
settled for biological isolation garments and application of a biocide
to the spacecraft.

In the event, the precautions proved unnecessary and quarantine was
abandoned after the third lunar landing. Apart from the expense,
quarantine was irksome to engineers and scientists alike, for it impeded
postflight debriefings and delayed the release of samples to principal
investigators. In any case, quarantine was not intended to be absolute:
the second guideline governing procedures stated, "the preservation
of human life should take precedence over the maintenance of
quarantine." If a command module had begun to sink during recovery
operations, or if a major fire had broken out in the crew quarters of
the receiving laboratory, or if a quarantined astronaut had suffered a
medical emergency that could not be handled within the LRL, quarantine
would have been broken.41

The results of biological and chemical examination of the returned lunar
samples indicated that life never has existed on the moon - or at least
that it left no traces at the sites examined. As did the data returned
from Mars by the Viking landers a few years later, the Apollo results
showed that the only conclusion that can be reached at present
concerning the existence of life elsewhere in our solar system is,
"not proven."

* The phrase, "before this
decade is out," was deliberately chosen by the President to allow
for some flexibility of interpretation. It could without serious
equivocation be construed as meaning either 1969 or 1970. See Theodore
C. Sorenson, Kennedy (New York: Harper & Row, 1965), p.
525.

** MSC's refusal to anticipate
scientific requirements and modify the spacecraft to accommodate them
was one of the scientists' most serious complaints. The head of the
Experimental Planetology Branch, Solar System Exploration Division, at
Johnson Space Center pointed out in criticizing the draft of this book
that "It require[d] at least a year of lead time for even the
simplest of new ideas to be introduced into a program as complicated as
Apollo. Therefore, waiting until after the first one or two successful
landings to begin accommodating the scientists' wishes was guaranteed to
delay any implementation for a long time." He also cited Gilruth's
waiting until early 1970 to work out MSC's differences with the
scientific community as a similar source of irritation for scientists.
Wm. C. Phinney to William Waldrip, "Review of Apollo History,"
Mar. 31, 1987. The point is certainly valid, but it presumes, as
scientists typically did, that science should have taken precedence as
early as Apollo 12. The present author does not agree. The last 2 1/2
years before Apollo 11 were spent recovering from the AS-204 fire, which
totally occupied spacecraft engineers and program managers. Problems
with the lunar module lingered through 1968. To have begun modifying the
untried lunar module to suit the purposes of science a year or more
before the first lunar flight would have been to invite trouble.

*** Apollo 13 was indeed an
emergency, but the responsibility for saving the mission was in the
hands of experts on the ground. The success of the rescue did not depend
on the crew's ability to act swiftly in a critical situation.

**** Carbon compounds, for example -
possible relics of extinct life or precursors of life on the moon -
could be detected if present to the extent of a few parts per billion.

30. Homer E. Newell, Beyond the
Atmosphere: Early Years of Space Science, NASA SP-4211
(Washington, 1980), p. 246. Newell also commented that the Houston
center "developed an arrogance born of unbounded self-confidence
and possession of a leading role in the nation's number-one space
project, Apollo."

36. A Review of Space
Research, report of the Summer Study conducted under the auspices
of the Space Science Board of the National Academy of Sciences at the
State University of Iowa, June 17-August 10, 1962, National Academy of
Sciences-National Research Council Publication 1079 (Washington, 1962),
p. 11-19. A questionnaire sent to several prominent scientists before
the study sought opinions on the place of scientists in manned space
flight. To the question, "How do we develop our
astro-scientists?" the consensus of replies included the statement
that qualified scientists "should go through astronaut training for
part of each year to become familiar with problems of space flight. It
is hoped that this would not involve too large a fraction of their time,
since emphasis should be on their development as scientists."

37. An unnamed Marshall Space Flight
Center engineer paraphrased Slayton's attitude as, "it is easier to
teach an astronaut to pick up rocks than to teach a geologist to land on
the moon." Minutes of the combined MSFC staff and board meeting,
Nov. 10, 1969. This statement should be read alongside the scientists'
estimate of the difficulties of space flight training cited in 36.

38. Harrison H. Schmitt interview, May
30, 1984. Elbert King, who was involved with crew training for the
earlier missions, confirmed Schmitt's evaluation of Armstrong's ability
as an observer: "Armstrong . . . never said much, was kind of quiet
on field trips, and we really didn't know how much of this he was
soaking up. . . . It turned out that he had really picked up a lot of it
and was doing very well with it." Elbert H. King, Jr., interview
with Loyd S. Swenson, Jr., May 27, 1971, tape in JSC History Office
files.

40. See, for example, the report of a
series of science workshops sponsored by NASA's Ames Research Center,
The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence: SETI, NASA
SP-419 (Washington, 1977). One group stated the central proposition this
way: "The conclusion that the origin and evolution of life is
inextricably interwoven with the origin and evolution of the cosmos
seems inescapable" (p. 41). The question arose again in the Viking
mission to Mars, which carried experiments designed to detect life. Some
scientists, it seems, desperately wanted to detect life on Mars. See
Edward Clinton Ezell and Linda Neuman Ezell, On Mars: Exploration
of the Red Planet 1958-1978, NASA SP-4212 (Washington, 1984), pp.
409-14.